382 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIII. No. 584. 



and he is going to continue the work with 

 vigor for its absolutely paying results. 



A little town in New England of less 

 than a thousand inhabitants, whose chief 

 industry is tishing, has recently become im- 

 pressed with hope, founded on experiences 

 elsewhere, that something might be done 

 so that its thousands of acres of breeding 

 grounds might be redeemed to agriculture, 

 its desirable building sites relieved from 

 the curse of mosquitoes which has always 

 existed, and thus its lands become habitable, 

 its taxable valuations increased, and so the 

 town be greatly benefited. Inspired to 

 join the crusaders, it had been working in 

 a limited way and found excellent results, 

 but it is now in a movement for raising and 

 expending a large sum of public money to 

 carry out very radical plans recommended 

 to make these benefits assured and is asking 

 the necessary legislative authority. 



We know the case of the gentleman who 

 bought a beautiful and extensive estate 

 with the ban on it, that no one could live 

 on it in July and August, but who was 

 impressed with the anti-mosquito theory, 

 by that same entomologist with the prac- 

 tical turn of mind, and went to work in 

 good earnest and has made his large tract 

 one without mosquitoes. His success led 

 him naturally to wish others to be blessed 

 likewise and he was instrumental in a cam- 

 paign of greater proportions. One in this 

 wider territory wrote the speaker within a 

 few weeks that the success of the work was 

 still continuing, although four summers 

 had passed; and a person in another state 

 has stated within a few days that he was 

 visiting in the district in question this sea- 

 son and went through parts which he knew 

 once to be infested beyond human endur- 

 ance and he did not raise a mosquito. So 

 much for the lasting effects of work thor- 

 oughly and practically executed. 



But I am sure I do not need to rehearse 



smaller instances when all know of the 

 transcendent achievements of Dr. Gorgas, 

 both in Havana and in the Panama zone 

 almost entirely as the result of practical 

 mosquito extermination. Nor do. you need 

 to be reminded that the practical work of 

 this kind in New Orleans, first under Dr. 

 Kohnke and others and taken up later by 

 the general government with all its prestige 

 and power, through its Public Health and 

 Marine Hospital Service under Surgeon 

 General Wyman, with his able corps of 

 specialists all working against the mosquito 

 — that this brought about the end of the 

 scourge of yellow fever here this season 

 without the aid of frost and has added 

 to the demand that this scourge and its 

 attendant ruinous results to commerce 

 through quarantine, be treated solely as a 

 mosquito proposition and not as an in- 

 scrutable order of Providence. The speak- 

 er well recalls the force with which Dr. 

 Kohnke at the second convention of the 

 American Mosquito Extermination Society 

 urged the necessity of screening the cisterns 

 of New Orleans and spoke of his efforts to 

 legally compass this. But his warning was 

 acted on too late. He was then ahead of 

 his time, but we are glad to say he is not 

 now. 



The demand is simply: Stop breeding 

 mosquitoes and stop it by practical meas- 

 ures—no chimerical plans— nothing but 

 what a child may comprehend. But do it 

 thoroughly— do it so that results will last. 

 Abolish forever the breeding places and b& 

 careful not to make new ones. Communi- 

 ties should put up money as they would to 

 build a fine road — as is often the case, 

 $10,000 a mile through a mosquito-infested 

 section — and do it 'before building the road, 

 and then the road, when built, can answer 

 its full purpose of comfortable travel and 

 traffic. 



How much is the quinine bill of the 

 country? And who can estimate, besides. 



